The social WiFi is a technology in which user equipment supporting a WiFi function perceives existence of each other by using a WiFi interface, and completes networking and communication by using the WiFi interface.
In a social WiFi friend discovery application, to discover and identify other user equipment, each user equipment needs to broadcast its identifier information. The social WiFi is implemented by using WiFi Direct, where WiFi Direct is also referred to as a wireless peer-to-peer network (WiFi P2P). In WiFi Direct, a user equipment broadcasts its existence by sending a Probe Request frame, to complete a user equipment discovery or a service discovery.
In an existing WiFi mechanism, each user equipment broadcasts its identifier information by using plaintext, which cannot ensure security of user identifier information, and may lead to problems such as privacy leakage.